How Facebook Plans to Grab a Slice of the TV Advertising Pie

In a bid to break into the television industry’s dominance of media budgets, Facebook plans to sell television-style commercials for as much as $2.5 million a day, reports Bloomberg.

The social-networking site will start offering 15-second spots to advertisers later this year, following efforts by Google and AOL to capture TV ad dollars, the story notes. Prices will range from $1 million to $2.5 million a day.

"With Facebook, the idea would be to capitalize on the millions of users who actively check the site on a daily basis, including during the prime-time hours coveted by television advertisers," the story reports. "As of last quarter, 61 percent of Facebook members were using the site daily — a number that has risen despite management predictions that it would decline."

The service would allow advertisers to put their ads directly in a user’s feed. At 15 seconds, the ads would be the same length as some TV commercials, and would also be the length of Facebook’s Instagram’s videos, a feature that was added last month.

The ads would be sold on a full-day basis and would be based on age and gender, a switch from Facebook’s current practice of selling ads based on location and areas of interest, the story says.

"By relying on fewer categories, Facebook is mimicking the way television ads are purchased, an attempt to make the process more comfortable for executives accustomed to TV," the report notes.